We now turn from a more historical perspective on chatbots to more modern chatbots. In contrast to the origin of chatbots, most modern chatbots provide a blend of information seeking and retrieval support, task completion, and chit-chat functionalities. To demonstrate this trend in evolution of chatbots, we now dive into XiaoIce (“Little Ice”) [1]} as an example of the modern class of chatbots. After its release in 2014, XiaoIce became one of the most popular social chatbots in the world reaching more than 660 million active users.
